From The Publisher: Mar. 23, 1992

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Last week I reported associate publisher Ed McCarrick's view of TIME's role in the media environment of the '90s: "We help make the country's perceptions happen." This week we have an example. During a campaign in which the voters are giving every sign of being sick of sound bites and slogans, we persuaded the two leading Democratic contenders for the presidency to pause for an hour between their finger pointing and photo opportunities and sit down for an exclusive sleeves-up, statistics-rich duel over their economic prescriptions for the country.

Getting both Democrats to the table at the Butler Aviation facility in Chicago took the political sophistication of a campaign-trail veteran like columnist Michael Kramer. The result was a summit that chief of correspondents John Stacks believes is unprecedented in the age of television. "I cannot think of a comparable situation where two leading candidates agreed to devote this much time and depth debating each other for print," says Stacks.

The debate was moderated by Kramer and Stacks and was attended by editor in chief Jason McManus, Washington bureau chief Stan Cloud, Nation-section editor Jack White, contributor Larry Barrett and senior writer Walter Shapiro. With the help of editorial assistant Lina Lofaro, who gathered the material, Kramer reviewed the candidates' positions.

"We arranged it so that our role was minimal," he says, "allowing them to really go after each other on the issues." The two men rarely locked eyes until the last two minutes, when Tsongas challenged Clinton to pull his negative ads.

Afterward, both Democrats agreed to pose for the cover picture by portraitist Gregory Heisler. But even then the competition was calling. As the camera clicked, a Tsongas aide could be heard outside yelling, "You may be making art in there, but we got to make some politics out there."